The Zohar (, 'Splendor' or 'Radiance') is a foundational work of Kabbalistic literature.Scholem, Gershom and Melila Hellner-Eshed. "Zohar". Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 21. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. 647–664. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah and scriptural interpretations as well as material on mysticism, mythical cosmogony, and mystical psychology. The Zohar contains discussions of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, redemption, the relationship of ego to darkness and "true self" to "the light of God".
The Zohar was first publicized by Moses de León (c. 1240 – 1305 CE), who claimed it was a Tannaitic work recording the teachings of Shimon ben Yochai (). This claim is universally rejected by modern scholars, most of whom believe de León, also an infamous forger of Geonic material, wrote the book himself between 1280 and 1286. Some scholars argue that the Zohar is the work of multiple medieval authors and/or contains a small amount of genuinely antique novel material. Later additions to the Zohar, including Tiqqune hazZohar and Ra'ya Meheimna, were composed by a 14th century imitator.
Language
Zoharic Aramaic According to Gershom Scholem and other modern scholars, Zoharic Aramaic is an artificial dialect largely based on a linguistic fusion of the Babylonian Talmud and Targum Onkelos, but confused by de León's simple and imperfect grammar, his limited vocabulary, and his reliance on loanwords, including from contemporaneous medieval languages. The author further confused his text with occasional strings of Aramaic-seeming gibberish, in order to give the impression of obscure knowledge. While acknowledging that Zoharic Aramaic did not develop organically from any preexisting dialect, some recent scholarship argues that Aramaic was chosen for literary or mystical purposes, not merely to disguise the forgery.https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10088406/1/The%20Aramaic%20of%20the%20Zohar.pdf page 7,8
Zoharic Hebrew The original text of the Zohar, as cited by various early Kabbalists beginning around the 14th century (e.g. Isaac b. Samuel of Acre, David b. Judah the Pious, Israel Alnaqua, Alfonso de Zamora) was partly in Hebrew and partly in Aramaic. By the time of the first edition (1558) the text was entirely in Aramaic, with the exception of the Midrash haNe'elam, where Hebrew words and phrases are often employed as in the Babylonian Talmud. "The Hebrew of the Midrash haNe'elam is similar in its overall form to the language of the early midrashim, but its specific vocabulary, idioms, and stylistic characteristics bear the imprint of medieval Hebrew, and its midrashic manner is clearly that of a later imitation."
Authorship
Initial view Abraham Zacuto's 1504 work Sefer Yuhasin (first printed 1566) quotes from the Kabbalist Isaac ben Samuel of Acre's 13th-century chronicle Divre hayYamim (lost), which claims that the widow and daughter of de León revealed that he had written it himself and only ascribed the authorship to Shimon ben Yochai for personal profit:
Isaac goes on to say that he obtained mixed evidence of Zohar's authenticity from other Spanish Kabbalists, but the fragment ends abruptly, mid-sentence, without any conclusion. Though Isaac is willing to quote it in his Otzar haChayyim and his Meirat Einayim, he does so rarely. Isaac's testimony was censored from the second edition (1580)The Complete Yuchsin Book, third edition (5723), p. XXII "ובדף קל"ג השמיט המוציא לאור את המאמר על דבר ספר הזהר." (English: "And on page 133 the publisher erased the essay concerning the matter of the book of the Zohar.") and remained absent from all editions thereafter until its restoration nearly 300 years later in the 1857 edition.Available at HebrewBooks.org: ספר יוחסין השלם, p. 88-89 / 95-96 (Hebrew).Dan Rabinowitz in Hakirah, The Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought, volume 2 (fall 2015), Nekkudot: The Dots that Connect Us, p. 64. In 1243 a different Jew had reportedly found a different ancient mystical book in a cave near Toledo, which may have been de Leon's inspiration.
Within fifty years of its appearance in Spain it was quoted by Kabbalists, including the Italian mystical writer Menahem Recanati and Todros ben Joseph Abulafia. However, Joseph ben Waqar harshly attacked the Zohar, which he considered inauthentic,Moritz Steinschneider, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, Berlin, 1925, p. 171 and some Jewish communities, such as the Dor Daim from Yemen, Andalusian (Western Sefardic or Spanish and Portuguese Jews), and some Italian communities, never accepted it as authentic. Other early Kabbalists, such as David b. Judah the Pious (fl. c. 1300), Abraham b. Isaac of Granada, (fl. c. 1300), and David b. Amram of Aden (fl. c. 1350), so readily imitate its pseudepigraphy by ascribing contemporaries' statements to Zoharic sages that it is obvious they understood its nature. The manuscripts of the Zohar are from the 14th-16th centuries.
Late Middle Ages By the 15th century, the Zohar's authority in the Iberian Jewish community was such that Joseph ibn Shem-Tov drew arguments from it in his attacks against Maimonides, and even representatives of non-mystical Jewish thought began to assert its sacredness and invoke its authority in the decision of some ritual questions. In Jacobs' and Broyde's view, they were attracted by its glorification of man, its doctrine of immortality, and its ethical principles, which they saw as more in keeping with the spirit of Talmudic Judaism than are those taught by the philosophers, and which was held in contrast to the view of Maimonides and his followers, who regarded man as a fragment of the universe whose immortality is dependent upon the degree of development of his active intellect. The Zohar instead declared Man to be the lord of creation, whose immortality is solely dependent upon his morality.
Conversely, Elia del Medigo (), in his Beḥinat ha-Dat, endeavored to show that the Zohar could not be attributed to Shimon ben Yochai, by a number of arguments. He claims that if it were his work, the Zohar would have been mentioned by the Talmud, as has been the case with other works of the Talmudic period; he claims that had ben Yochai known by divine revelation the hidden meaning of the precepts, his decisions on Jewish law from the Talmudic period would have been adopted by the Talmud, that it would not contain the names of rabbis who lived at a later period than that of ben Yochai; he claims that if the Kabbalah were a revealed doctrine, there would have been no divergence of opinion among the Kabbalists concerning the mystic interpretation of the precepts.Bechinat ha-Dat ed. Vienna, 1833, p. 43, in the Jacobs and Broyde, "The Zohar", Jewish Encyclopedia
Believers in the authenticity of the Zohar countered that the lack of references to the work in Jewish literature was because ben Yochai did not commit his teachings to writing but transmitted them orally to his disciples over generations until finally the doctrines were embodied in the Zohar. They found it unsurprising that ben Yochai should have foretold future happenings or made references to historical events of the post-Talmudic period.
By the late 16th century, the Zohar was present in one-tenth of all private Jewish libraries in Mantua.Shifra Baruchson, Sefarim ve-korim: tarbut ha-keriah shel Yehude Italyah be-shilhe haRenesans (Ramat Gan: Bar–Ilan University Press, 1993), 160. The authenticity of the Zohar was accepted by such 16th century Jewish luminaries as Joseph Karo (d. 1575), and Solomon Luria (d. 1574), who wrote nonetheless that Jewish law does not follow the Zohar when it is contradicted by the Babylonian Talmud.See also Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, Likkutei Sichos, Vol. 33, p. 98, which argues that where there is an argument between Kabbalah and poskim, the former should be followed. This view is explicitly rejected by most modern authorities, including the Aruch HaShulchan (OC 25:29) and the Mishnah Berurah (25:42). See also David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (Chelek 4, Siman 1,111) and Tzvi Ashkenazi (Siman 36) (cited in Yonah Gerondi's Shaarei Teshuva 25:14). See also the Responsa of Menachem Schneerson (Responsa Tzemach Tzedek A.H. Siman 18,4) and Divrei Nechemia (Responsa Divrei Nechemia O.H. 21). The views of the Radvaz and of the Chacham Tzvi are that one should follow the opinion of the Zohar only where a conclusive statement has not been made by the legal authorities (Gemara or Poskim), or when an argument is found between the Poskim.
Luria writes that the Zohar cannot even override a minhag.Responsa #98. Luria says, "ודע אהו' שכל רבותיי ואבותיי הקדושים ששמשו גאוני עולם ראיתי מהם שלא נהגו כך אלא כדברי התלמוד והפוסקים ואם היה רשב"י עומד לפנינו ונוח לשנות המנהג שנהגו הקדמונים לא אשגחינן ביה כי ברוב דבריו אין הלכה כמותו, Know, my dear, that I witnessed all of my holy teachers and ancestors, who serve the great masters of yore, go against this practice, instead acting according to the Talmud and the decisors. And were Simeon ben Yohai himself to stand before us and set about changing the custom of the ancients, we would pay him no mind, because most of his teachings are contrary to the Law". N.b. that Simon Hurwitz's English edition of Luria's responsa (1938), available on Sefaria, is a paraphrase which should only be used with extreme caution. See Jacob Menkes, "The Maharshal", Journal of Jewish Bibliography 1:3 (April 1939) p. 86-93. Moses Isserles (d. 1572) writes that he "heard" that the author of the Zohar is ben Yochai.Tur, Yoreh Deah, Siman 65, note 12 of Isserles's Darkhei Moshe. Hebrew original: שמעתי כי בעל ספר הזוהר הוא סתם ר' שמעון המוזכר בתלמוד שהוא ר"ש בן יוחאי. Elijah Levita (d. 1559) did not believe in its antiquity,Jordan S. Penkower, A Renewed Inquiry into Massoret Ha-Massoret of Elijah Levita: Lateness of Vocalization and Criticism of the Zohar (in Hebrew) pg. 35 nor did Joseph Scaliger (d. 1609)François Secret, Le Zôhar chez les kabbalistes chrétiens de la Renaissance (Paris: Mouton, 1964), 99–102 or Louis Cappel (d. 1658) or Johannes Drusius (d. 1616).Drusius discussed the lateness of the Zohar and pointed to the importance of Sefer Yuhasin by Zacut in 1616 letter. See Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, “I have always loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 325, n. 62. David ibn abi Zimra (d. 1573) held that one can follow the Zohar only when it does not conflict with any other sourceResponsa IV:1,111 and records that "You asked me about scribes modifying torah scrolls to accord with the Zohar ... and I was shocked, for how can they consider the Zohar better than the Talmud Bavli, which has come down to us? ... So I went myself to the house of the scribe and I found three scrolls which he had edited, and I fixed them, and I restored the Torah to its proper glory."Responsa IV:1,172
Enlightenment Period Debate continued over the generations; del Medigo's arguments were echoed by Leon of Modena (d. 1648) in his Ari Nohem, by Jean Morin (d. 1659), and by Jacob Emden (d. 1776).
Emden—who may have been familiar with Modena through Morin's arguments—devoted a book to the criticism of the Zohar, called Mitpachas Sefarim (מטפחת ספרים), in an effort against the remaining adherents of the Sabbatean movement (in which Sabbatai Zevi, a Jewish apostate, cited Messianic prophecies from the Zohar as proof of his legitimacy). Emden argued that the book on which Zevi based his doctrines was a forgery, arguing that the Zohar:
misquotes passages of Scripture misunderstands the Talmud contains some ritual observances that were ordained by later rabbinical authorities mentions the Crusades against Muslims (who did not exist in the 2nd century)